Through the semester, I learned the importance of deep and active reading, and I was able to apply it to my work in class through annotating works from other writers. I always begin my annotating by reading through the piece of writing one page at a time. As I read each page carefully, I immediately highlight things that stand out to me, so I don’t lose track of them. I’ll highlight things that I feel as though I have a connection to or a comment on. I also highlight things that I both agree and disagree with, claims that I find interesting or language that I like. I also highlight words I’ve never seen, so I can look up the definition and write it above the word. This makes it easier for me to understand what I’m reading, so I’ll often reread the passage with the definition I wrote down. After I go through and highlight the things that stood out, I reread the page a second time and write down why I highlighted something, whether it’s a statement I want to make, a comment I want to keep track of or a question I have. I was never taught how to properly annotate something before this class, so it was definitely a learning curve for me. I believe that I have a very solid method of annotating, which allows me to truly connect with the text, and draw important conclusions. I often walk away with a much better understanding of what I read when I use annotations.

We also chose various spots in some of the essay’s we read and decided if we agreed, disagreed or had complicated opinions on what we read. This practice allowed us to better connect with and understand what we were reading, and it got us brainstorming for our essays. Below is my post from Journal #9, where I responded to “In Defense of Distraction” by Samuel Anderson:

Page 2 Paragraph 3 – Agree
Anderson claims that “we are, in short, terminally distracted” and I find that I agree. While I can buckle down and focus on a certain task, there’s always something in the back of my brain that is peeking through in whatever I’m doing. It doesn’t have to be a large distraction, but any thought that we have that is unrelated to the task that we are currently performing is technically a distraction. Whether it’s thinking about what you’re going to eat for lunch after finishing your English assignment, or your weekend plans rattling around in your brain while listening to a lecture, distractions are part of everyday life, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing all the time. It’s an extremely normal and human thing that everyone experiences to one degree or another.
Page 6 Paragraph 4 – Disagree
Anderson had the opportunity to speak with Winifred Gallagher, the author of Rapt (a book about attention), where Gallagher claims that “you can pretty much focus all the time” which I don’t really agree with. Gallagher claims to have a “very strong executive function” which allows her to focus incredibly hard and cut out distractions. While it’s wonderful that she has this ability, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a fair standard that everyone should be held to. It’s incredibly easy to get distracted. As I mentioned, any little thought or sound can serve as a distraction, some worse than others, and it can be incredibly difficult to just lock in and focus whenever needed. I’ve had a lot of my own moments where I’ve tried incredibly hard to sit down and focus on something, cutting off all possible distractions, but it doesn’t always work for me, and I know there’s many people in the same boat as I am. No matter how many sensory inputs I remove from my surroundings, my brain is constantly firing off new thoughts, which I find almost impossible to escape from.
Page 7 Paragraph 4 – Agree
Anderson claims that he is “not ready to blame [his] restless attention entirely on faulty willpower” because “the internet… is engineered to tap right into our deepest mechanisms of addiction.” This was in response to Gallagher’s claim that the desire to jump right to technology as soon as your phone buzzes is our own fault. I find that I agree with Anderson, because I don’t think the urge to jump to our devices is entirely our fault. The internet is designed to be addictive, to get people to spend as much time on their devices as possible. Whether it’s a like on your newest Instagram post, or a funny TikTok that you found while scrolling, the internet rewards us by interacting with it. These rewards trigger a dopamine release in our brains, and this constant dopamine intake that we receive from the internet can be extremely addictive. Since our phones and the internet are programmed to be so addictive, I don’t really believe that it’s completely our fault for continuing to engage with it, because it’s become such a normal part of our everyday lives.